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Lockheed Claims Breakthrough On Fusion Energy Project
Lockheed Martin claims it has made a significant breakthrough in the creation of nuclear fusion reactors. The company says it has proved the feasibility of building a 100MW reactor measuring only 7 feet by 10 feet. They say the design can be built and tested within a year, and they expect an operational reactor within a decade. The project is coming out of stealth mode now to seek partners within academia, government, and industry. "Lockheed sees the project as part of a comprehensive approach to solving global energy and climate change problems. Compact nuclear fusion would also produce far less waste than coal-powered plants, and future reactors could eliminate radioactive waste completely, the company said."
Revealed work in 2013
http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-22/lockheeds-skunk-works-promises-fusion-power-four-years
If this really works...really cool things could be just around the corner.
From WIKI:
The high beta fusion reactor (also known as the 4th generation prototype T4) is a project being developed by a team led by Charles Chase of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. The "high beta" configuration allows a compact fusion reactor design and speedier development timeline (5 years instead of 30). It was presented at the Google Solve for X forum on February 7, 2013.[1]
"The device is 2x2x4 meters in size. It is cylindrical shaped. It has a vacuum inside with high magnetic fields, made using electromagnets. Uncharged deuterium gas is injected. It is heated using radio waves, in much the same way a microwave heats food. When the gas temperature reaches over 16 electron-volts, the gas ionizes into ions and electrons. This plasma exerts a pressure on the surrounding magnetic fields. This plasma pressure is counterbalanced by the magnetic field pressure in a beta ratio:
\beta = \frac{p}{p_{mag}} = \frac{n k_B T}{(B^2/2\mu_0)} [2]
The plan is to reach a high-beta ratio. Plans call for a compact 100 MW machine. The company hopes to have a prototype working by 2017, scale it up to a full production model by 2022 and to be able to meet global baseload energy demand by 2050. Here are some other characteristics of this machine:
The magnetic field increases the farther out that the plasma goes, which pushes the plasma back in.
It also has very few open field lines (very few paths for the plasma to leak out; uses a cylinder, not a Tokamak ring).
Very good arch curvature of the field lines.
The system has a beta of about 1.[3]
This system uses deuterium.[3]
The system heats the plasma using radio waves.[3]
The machine was designed by Dr. Thomas McGuire[3] who did his PhD thesis[4][5] on fusors at MIT. Chase said that “the fuel (two isotopes of hydrogen) has six orders [1.000.000] of magnitude higher energy density than oil. You can’t make a bomb from it, and it has no meltdown risk. It’s very different from nuclear fission reactors.”
I think this AvWeek story http://aviationweek.com/techno... is a better description, but then Aviation Week has more technical writers..
It's just bad journalism. The actual press release doesn't make this claim.
Here's the Wikipedia article on his project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Here's some research he was involved in at MIT that he was involved in at some unknown date: http://ssl.mit.edu/research/Fu...
Here's a video of one of the researchers talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Nuclear reactors aren't a whole lot larger, they managed to make them small enough to fit on a space rocket, a submarine and back in the 1960's, nine of them on an Aircraft Carrier. It's the support systems (like cooling) and maintenance buildings that end up taking up several acres. Dissipating the waste heat of a 20MW reactor safely, indefinitely, is no small feat.
moox. for a new generation.